Will Blockchain Eradicate California’s Drought? – Coinfomania

According to a recentpress release,IBM will use blockchain technology and the Internet of Things (IoT) to impede groundwater drought in California.

In a bid to facilitate sustainable use of major water resource, the research arm of the American tech giant, IBM Research along with SweetSense, a sensor tech provider, has collaborated with the Freshwater Trust.

The goal of the partnership is to use blockchain technology to concurrently regulate the “largest and most at risk aquifers in North America situated inSacramento-San Joaquin River Delta, Southern California.

Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta is referred to as the “nexus of California’s statewide water system,” it covers about 1,100 square meters, thereby serving as a breeding ground for the new sustainability pilot.

IBM further adds that the new project will be provided with research support bythe University of Colorado Boulder, and enjoy concerted funding from the Water Foundation and the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation.

With the objective of furthering the project, IoT sensors will be used to transmit water extraction data to satellites and then recorded on the cloud-hosted platform of IBM.

Explaining how the new platform will function, the release mentioned that,

“Through a web-based dashboard, water consumers, including farmers; financers and regulators will all be able to monitor and track the use of groundwater to demonstrate how sustainable pumping levels can be achieved through the trading of groundwater use shares in the State of California.”

In simpler terms, a farmer who has little or no plans to water his farm can trade water credits on the blockchain platform with another farmer who will require more water.

Dr. Solomon Assefa, the vice president for emerging market solutions and director at IBM Research-Africa, said in the release:

“With the addition of the blockchain, we can bridge critical trust and transparency gaps making it possible to build a robust, scalable and cost-efficient platform for managing precious groundwater supplies anywhere in the world.”

Hope is in the air that this new blockchain-based project will alleviate the California drought as it has done for other lands.